I would love to see a site provide a little pop-out window with all of the mined data displayed for the site users to see. I could see where the 3rd parties mining that data would not want all of the users to see that. I've never used GA or similar, but I seriously doubt that the 3rd parties provide the site owners/developers a method for being able to do this. They want to drive eyeballs back to their site to view the metrics.
The problem is that they can't do that to completion- they often can't know the data that their advertisers are collecting and they certainly can't share the data that they're collecting from 3rd parties using 'profiles'. An important fact from this article is your privacy is often the minimum of the privacy settings you have set. So it might be true that you've never authorized Vox to monitor your demographic data, but they know enough to get that information from other companies. Legally they can't share that information.
I have been selectively whitelisting using noscript for a couple of years. It's a tedious burden, but it is interesting. The web is largely broken without JS.
I think you would miss out on about 90% of what the web has to offer if you simply disable Javascript. A bit like saying you should never use a bank or credit cards and do everything with cash. Javascript is one of the most popular programming languages these days. This forum is full of programmers, so it's not surprising you get downvoted for recommending that people disable Javascript.
“If you logged into our network through social media we also have access to portions of your public social profile, such as your name, email address, and photo.“
Obvious in hindsight, but the profile picture is probably a goldmine for targeted advertising. Not sure if anybody does that but using that for age estimation would probably be way more accurate than the guesses I’ve seen implicitly (lots of ads like “people in <age group> love this product”) and explicitly.
Also profile photos are frequently reused between sites. Easy way of connecting handles, though they're not always real since some people create fake profiles on one network from real profiles on another.
I can recommend https://www.freefullrss.com where you can convert any rss feed into a full text rss feed. The websites get rendered for you and you can view them in the rss reader of your choice, so you don't have to visit the site at all, no JavaScript and no fingerprinting exposure at all.
In the long run, I think this might be the future, to have a server to render websites into a readable format for you.
I use Brave and OpenVPN on a cloud server. I tested my privacy with this https://privacy.net/analyzer/ ... Strangely, it said I was logged in to twitter, facebook and reddit when I'm not logged in to any of them. I don't even have a twitter account.
Cool concept but for me on Brave the site was pretty broken. Content didn't seem to be loading correctly and honestly the navigation takes up half the page and made whatever results did come up really annoying to read. Scrolling was not smooth and things would disappear before they were actually out of the viewport. Also incorrectly reported me as using chrome.
>It’s a lot — I get it — but the net result is that you, dear reader, get to read our content without a paywall.
I'd love to examine this. Podcasts for example, have almost none of this tracking (as enforced by Apple) and no pay wall. And frankly, since journalism costs pretty much however much you're paying your staff I'd love to see the argument for how much the CEO of vox gets paid when compared to the cumulative loss of privacy and self-determination that their readers have suffered.
Podcast tracking is improving, but not super useful yet in many cases. It works best for advertisers with high LTV products that can be tracked via coupon codes or memorable vanity URLs. A lot of advertisers actually shy away from them because they try to charge high CPMs without great tracking, which is important when their reach is so low comparatively so other statistical methods aren't as useful for measurement.
[+] [-] et2o|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylan604|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Traster|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superkuh|6 years ago|reply
Like egdod said at the bottom of this comment thread, downvoted into oblivion: "Javascript is a cancer and should be disabled whenever possible."
[+] [-] DEADBEEFC0FFEE|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrismmay|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsbinz|6 years ago|reply
Obvious in hindsight, but the profile picture is probably a goldmine for targeted advertising. Not sure if anybody does that but using that for age estimation would probably be way more accurate than the guesses I’ve seen implicitly (lots of ads like “people in <age group> love this product”) and explicitly.
[+] [-] 3pt14159|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zwaps|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greenyoda|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wildduck|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tutfbhuf|6 years ago|reply
In the long run, I think this might be the future, to have a server to render websites into a readable format for you.
[+] [-] chrismmay|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] allovernow|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Traster|6 years ago|reply
I'd love to examine this. Podcasts for example, have almost none of this tracking (as enforced by Apple) and no pay wall. And frankly, since journalism costs pretty much however much you're paying your staff I'd love to see the argument for how much the CEO of vox gets paid when compared to the cumulative loss of privacy and self-determination that their readers have suffered.
[+] [-] shostack|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] f2000|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] egdod|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cies|6 years ago|reply
Server-side JS is, well, just an inferior choice IMHO. But that's down to taste or the task at hand. But server-side it sure is no cancer.